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The last ~2.6 million
years of Earth history (the Quaternary) has been
a time
of both rapid and frequent climate changes. The record of these
changes
is preserved in a variety of Quaternary geologic archives including
ice
sheets,
marine and lacustrine sediments, tree rings, corals, and desert
dust. In this
course we will study the geological literature and recent research
on
important Quaternary environments and paleoclimate proxies in order to
determine the history of
past environmental changes and to investigate the
evidence used to reconstruct
that history. From such studies of the Quaternary,
geologists
are able to determine the rates and magnitudes of past
environmental
changes and planners and policy makers are able to build
valid policies
for societal problems such as coastal erosion, soil erosion,
and
flooding and drought.
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